Foldamers as new platforms for glycan microarray technology
Duration: 4 weeks to 12 months depending on the type of internship (can be adjusted to suit the interest of potential candidates)
Detalhes
BACKGROUND
Glycan microarrays are powerful tools for investigating the carbohydrate binding specificity of proteins and antibodies, identifying potential drug targets, and detecting the presence of carbohydrate-binding biomarkers of disease states. This research will consist of developing arylamide foldamers as new scaffolds for the well-defined display of carbohydrates and validating their suitability for integration with current microarray technology platforms. This class of molecules adopts helical conformations in solution, whose stability, predictability, tunability, and ease of synthesis make them particularly suitable for precise control of the number, nature, and orientation of glycoligands. Additionally, they can feature proteinogenic side chains. Therefore, arylamide foldamers are expected to allow for the mimicking of natural glycoproteins that decorate host cell surfaces and the creation of a more physiologically authentic platform for probing glycan-binding proteins.
OBJECTIVES
The project involves synthesizing glycofoldamer scaffolds featuring an appropriate functional group, which will enable their covalent immobilization onto glass slides, non-contact robotic printing of the glycofoldamers onto a microarray platform, and examining their spatial specificity against selected lectin targets.